1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to improvements in web based communication, and more particularly, the invention relates to an improved method and apparatus for distribution of web content.
2. The Prior Art
The World Wide Web (WWW) has become an important means of communication. In the use of the World Wide Web, the scaling of the delivery of web content to large numbers of users has become an important problem. In particular, content distribution networks such as those of Akamai scale the delivery of web content through the use of “secondary” web servers or “web caches” that are deployed throughout the Internet. A user request is directed to one of the secondary web servers that is “close” to the user. This allows a web site on the Internet to support large numbers of users and minimizes response times and network bandwidth requirements since much of the content is delivered from a secondary web server that is close to the user. Since the content that is delivered from a secondary web server needs to be correct and up-to-date, up-to-date content needs to be delivered to the secondary servers by some means. Today, this is typically done via TCP/IP and a TCP connection is used to copy content from the primary web server to a secondary web server.
FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art system of web content distribution (100) in which a separate copy of the content is sent to each of the secondary web servers. The web content distribution system as shown in FIG. 1 comprises a plurality of client machines (102, 110a to 110x) comprising personal computers, DOS machines, WINDOWS machines, Macintosh machines, Linux machines and dumb terminals. Also, the prior art web content distribution system of FIG. 1 further comprises a plurality of servers (104, 108a to 108n) and a plurality of routers (106a to 106f).
A web content object (114) is composed on a client computer (102) and transferred to a primary web server (104). Then from the web server (104), the web content object (114) is copied to secondary web servers (108a to 108n). Alternatively, the web content object (114) might be copied directly from client computer (102) to the secondary web servers (108a to 108n).
FIG. 2 illustrates a prior art functional sequence (200) of a web content distribution system. First, a web content object (114) is created (202) at a client machine (102). Then the web content object (114) is copied to each secondary server to each of the secondary servers.
Today, content distribution service providers like Akamai, use TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) to push content out to the web caches. Using TCP means that the same web content is repeatedly pushed out from the source for each web cache.
Since the distribution of web content to web caches consumes a significant amount of bandwidth and since the bandwidth consumed is expected to increase as web content incorporates more video clips and other high-bandwidth components, there is a need for a mechanism that can more efficiently deliver content to secondary web servers or web caches. A more efficient content delivery system can reduce network bandwidth costs and allow a network to support more content, more users and more applications.